ALTERNATIVE NEWS

17 Jun 2018

The Distancing Of Fathering: Too Great A Loss In The Landscape

'In each and every encounter I see

the power and the
value of fathers.'

By Karen Woodall: Today is Father’s Day in the UK and all around the land children
will be marking the day for their dads. For some there will be no card
or present, no telephone call or good wishes. For some children there
will be no opportunity to give these and for others the opportunity will
be denied to them. However we look at this, Father’s Day is a day when
someone somewhere will be hurting and others will be celebrating, loss
in the landscape after divorce and separation, makes Fathers Day both
happy and sad, not one or the other.Having just finished our alienated mothers retreat it is both a
difficult AND an easy thing to switch from the issues facing mothers to
the issues facing fathers. Difficult because I have been so fully
absorbed in the archetypes around the alienated mother and easy because
in doing this work with single sex groups, highlights the differences
between the alienation of mothers and alienation of fathers and the
underlying dynamics which cause this.Whilst many cry out that this is a
non gender specific issue, I beg to differ. For whilst both fathers
AND mothers become alienated from their children, the manner in which
they are alienated and the consequences of that are extremely different.The impact of alienation is different for men and women too and each
in relation to the loss of their child will feel that and express that
differently. This is why campaigning as an alienated father, requires a
different approach to campaigning as an alienated mother. What we
collectively understand about mothers, does not apply to what we
collectively understand about fathers, which is probably why the F4J
stunt on GMB was not well received this week. Pulling out a pair of
pink knitted balls on morning TV, Matt O Connor attempted to emulate the
tradition of using knitted and handmade vaginas, called ‘pussyhats’
which are worn by women around the world in the somewhat (in my view)
ludicrous approach to raising awareness of women’s equality.
Unfortunately for F4J, the use of pink knitted balls to follow this
tradition to raise awareness of fatherlessness in the UK, simply led to
widespread horror and outrage. Which goes to show that what is good for
the goose, is most definitely not good for the gander. Whilst I saw F4J
doing they have done for many years now – using airtime to make people
talk about the issue of fathers, others, including dads, were
disappointed that their experience was somehow tainted by this.From my perspective, it is not possible to gender neutralise the way
in which we represent the needs of men and women because each
experiences their own lives and the lives of others differently. Which
is why sitting in a TV studio with a knitted vagina on your head brings
applause and admiration, whilst pulling out a pair of knitted balls from
your pants, makes people cringe. Women, in our current day
stereotypes, are allowed to be a little bit outrageous and challenge
stereotypes – we are supposed to ‘hear her,’ whilst men in this day and
age are supposed to be apologetic for the balls they possess and
grateful that they have women to teach them how to be better humans.I come to this work with a background in gender mainstreaming, that
is understanding how men and women experience things differently and how
their different needs must be met in order for them to achieve equality
of outcome. Those different needs for support are never more clearly
seen than when I work with groups of mothers alone or groups of fathers.
In alienation, the opportunity to attend to those different needs is
essential because fathers face particular blocks to their parenting
which are structurally embedded and whilst mothers face the unintended
consequences of those too, their route to alienation has different
markers.When we look at the experience of alienation we have to look at the
way in which fathers who do not see their children are viewed by the
wider society. Fathering as an archetype has been systematically
attacked and eroded (so much so that the GMB debate which featured F4J
this week, was about whether Father’s Day was necessary anymore).
Following on from the retiring President of the Family Division’s
speech about celebrating the demise of the nuclear family and surrounded
by media images of families which are made up of anything but a mother,
a father and their children, it is easy to see why being a father must
feel like being an endangered species. Rather than celebrating our
dads, we are are collectively airbrushing them out of our archetypal
awareness, which means that being a dad who plays the traditional role
of keeper of the keys to reason and rationality, is becoming more and
more rarified. Nowadays dads are expected to call their children ‘mate’
and the family hierarchy in which dad is top dog, is increasingly
eschewed in favour of a sort of flattened approach in which mum is in
charge of dad and the kids. The message this gives to children is that
dad is something other than an adult, cannot be trusted but can be
indulged if he behaves himself. This kind of shift in dynamic, prompted
by decades of feminism and supported by rigid social policy control,
does not benefit children in my experience and puts dads at risk of
alienation even whilst the family still lives together. Little wonder
so many fathers find themselves immediately pushed to the margins on
separation, there is simply no space for them to have any kind of
meaningful relationship when they have already been alienated into the
space of being considered by all a fairly useless human being.I am really concerned about children whose fathers are pushed into
this space because their opportunity to draw from their fathers all
those things which are essential for them in their psychological
development are being denied. The role of fathers as protectors of
mothers and then in bringing the outside world into the home as
described by Winnicott is
simply diminished in our society today. In diminishing this reality of
how the biological and psychological functions intertwine in our
parenting roles, we have set up confusing and perhaps for children,
difficult to understand imperatives in the inter-psychic world. Whilst
mothers used to be the people who were pregnant and through the act of
carrying the child and giving birth became mothers psychologically as
well as physically, the couple is now supposed to consider themselves
pregnant, with fathers being expected as well as expectant, in the whole
pregnancy landscape.Whilst I am not advocating for a return to the days when dad
involvement was too deposit the seed and then smoke a cigar in the
waiting room after the birth of the baby, I am advocating a return to
understanding how men and women relate differently to parenting and how
their different needs for support in parenting are missed in the effort
to gender neutralise the experience. I am also calling for awareness of
the dangers of gender neutral approaches to anything to do with
parenting. It is not the goal to gender neutralise, it is the goal to
recognise the differences
between men and women in parenting pre and post separation because it
is in recognition of difference that we are able to fully meet the needs
of alienated mothers and fathers properly.In my work this week with alienated mothers, I have recognised again
that the underlying dynamic for mothers who become alienated is their
vulnerability to coercive control which is continued through the child.
The vulnerability in the background is linked to a number of different
things, including having a history of abuse in childhood. This is an
area which is being researched and illuminated so that we more fully
understand how the vulnerabilities lead to children being controlled.In my work with fathers I recognise again and again how they are
rendered powerless by the societal beliefs which have been seeded over
decades and how their partnering with mothers with control issues,
underpinned by narcissistic patterns of behaviours, leads them to fall
prey to alienation. It is only in separating out the background
experiences and the manner in which collective beliefs about mothers and
fathers, coupled with tightly stitched social policy and legislation,
drives outcomes which cause alienation, that the reality for alienated
mothers and fathers can be understood. In understanding these, we are
more able to put together responses which properly meet the needs of
alienated parents. It is in understanding these that we can properly
represent the experiences of the parents we work with.As I left our mothers retreat this week I drove through England
stopping off in places for cups of tea and a rest. In one of the
motorway service stations I observed a dad with a baby, the baby had the
biggest smile on his face as his dad sang to him, a smile so big it lit
up the whole place. In another place I watched a dad teaching his
little ones to stop, look and listen as they crossed to the cafe. In my
work I watch dads do what they do with the courage and strength of old
which is tempered by the tenderness of those things they have been told
they should be. In each and every encounter I see the power and the
value of fathers.As a younger woman who brought up a child alone because her father
wasn’t interested and as an older woman whose father disappeared out of
my life with someone unknown six weeks before I got married, fathers are
important to me. They are important not just for all the things they
bring to their children but because I know the impact of their absence –
I know what the gap in life without a father feels like.And so for all fathers everywhere, for everything that you are, not
just that which is acceptable to women, I wish you happy fathers day.You matter, you make a difference and you are truly welcome in the world just the way you are.

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